The term “cueing”, as used in the broadcast industry refers to the process of locating a particular section of a content segment, i.e., a video or audio file, to permit playback or recording beginning at the cued section. Cueing a content segment recorded on a length of magnetic tape typically requires fast-forwarding or Rewinding the tape to locate the desired section adjacent to the playback/record head. With traditional reel-to-reel and cassette-based video and audio tape recorders, cuing a particular content segment at its beginning or end requires the tape machine operator to shuttle the tape back and forth since some amount of overshoot generally occurs when initially Rewinding and Fast-Forwarding the tape to the beginning and end of the content segment, respectively.
Presently much of the content utilized by broadcasters now exists in digital, rather than in analog format. The existence of content segments in digital format permits content storage on one or more magnetic disc drives. Indeed, companies such Thomson/Grass Valley, currently market storage systems that utilize magnetic disk drives for storing large volumes of video and audio information. The cuing of a content segment stored on a magnetic disk drive occurs in a manner somewhat differently than with a magnetic tape recorder. A content segment stored on a magnetic disc exists as a set of blocks, each comprising a string of digital characters (“ones” and “zeros”). Each such block has an address that prescribes its location on the disc. Thus, to cue a particular content segment at the beginning requires aligning an address pointer to the address of the first block of the segment of interest. This will generally entail displacing the magnetic disc pick-up head across the surface of the magnetic platter of the disc drive to locate the head above the track storing the cued section of the content segment. Playback of the segment cued in this manner takes place by retrieving the block that has its address aligned with the address pointer.
In a effort to simulate the operation of a convention magnetic videotape recorder, some magnetic storage systems provide the operator with an interface that has “Play”, “Stop”, “Record”, “Fast-Forward” and “Rewind” buttons that provide comparable functionality to the same buttons on the magnetic tape recorder. Thus, actuating the “Play” button on a magnetic disc storage system will cause the playback of a content segment that has its address currently aligned with the address pointer, in much the same way that actuating the “Play” button on a conventional magnetic tape recorders causes playback of that content segment presently aligned with the playback head. Actuating the Fast-Forward and Rewind buttons causes the effective displacement of the content backwards and forwards relative, corresponding to the backward and forward movement of the magnetic tape on a magnetic tape recorder.
To cue a content segment at its beginning, an operator first actuates the Rewind button of the magnetic disc storage system to effectively displace the content segment to align the address pointer to the beginning block of the segment. Simply actuating the Rewind button will not by itself cue the segment to its beginning. Actuating the Rewind button effectively initiates a Rewind operation that continues until the Stop button is actuated. To cue a specific section of the content segment, an operator must make use of some type of monitoring device, such as a video monitor in the case of a video segment, to detect the beginning of the segment. The same is true when an operator initiates cueing of the end of the segment by actuating the Fast-Forward button. Only by monitoring the content segment can the operator know when the end of that content segment has been reached. Thus, even with a disc-based storage system, cueing a content segment remains problematic
Thus, there is need for a technique that achieves rapid cueing of a segment stored on a magnetic disk storage system to align the segment at its beginning or end.